What is Asbestos? How Dangerous Is It and What Is It Doing In My House ? These are all questions we’ve asked ourselves at one point or another. We’ve all wondered WHY would something potentially as carcinogenic would have been used with near-abandon for so long? Why would this potential carcinogen be lurking our homes,

Lead is a natural elemental metal that has many uses and has been used through antiquity. Though it has many uses it is extremely toxic to humans and as such, has been regulated by government agencies throughout the world. Awareness is growing, but people are still exposed to lead. Lead: an introduction to help you

Understanding LEED IAQ Testing Requirements LEED 2009 and LEEDv4 both have credits that require building flush-outs or building air quality testing prior to occupancy. The credit requires that after construction ends, the GC must install new filtration media and flush-out the building by supplying a total air volume of 14,000 cubic feet of outdoor air per square

Does Stainless Steel Leach Chemicals? There is a lot of information in the blogosphere about health and safety in cookware, but when a client asked whether stainless steel leached dangerous chemicals, I was unable to find a quick answer to her question. I decided to look into the issue of safe cookware myself. In one 2013

Testing a new car for VOC’s and Formaldehyde Healthy Building Science recently leased a brand new 2013 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Clean Diesel for use by the inspection department. While the car is very nice, low emissions and great mileage, it definitely has that New Car Smell. Being the science geeks we are at HBS, I

Dirty Electricity Concerns? In the recent blog of September 10th, 2013, EMI and LEDs – Not all LEDs are the same! we described dirty electricity and examined several brands of CFLs and LEDs. This blog tests several more brands of LEDs to determine which produces the least amount of LED dirty electricity . It has

When performing EMF surveys many “EMF consultants” only evaluate low-frequency magnetic fields. When folks call and say they “have an EMF meter” and are measuring “high emf,” they generally have a Gauss meter and are measuring magnetic field field strength or magnetic flux. Most Building Biologists focus on Alternating Current (AC) electromagnetic fields, and in addition

Radiation Exposure How Much Is “Too Much” Alex Stadtner, president of Healthy Building Science, wrote a blog in April 2012 entitled “Radioactive Granite and Quartzite – Risks from Radon” about discovering high levels of radiation in Quartzite and Granite used in residential building for items such as countertops, flooring, and bath and shower enclosures. While

Smog and Particulates How Fine Particulates Affect Exterior and Interior Air Quality No matter how well our “Green and Healthy” homes are designed and built, our interior air quality can only be as good as our exterior air quality (our “source air”), unless we add active air filtration into our building design. But how do

EMI and LEDs – Not all LEDs are the same! Electromagnetic Interference (EMI, aka: “Dirty Electricity,” or “High Voltage Transients”) is a term coined for quick transient pulses, harmonics, spikes and dips in the electrical power in a home’s wiring that deviates from a purely 60Hz sine wave. These often occur due to computers, other